FTSE 100 Today: Stocks plunge after retail sales disappointment

Investing.com – U.K. equities started with losses on Friday, with falls in all sectors, the most notable ones being the Industrial Engineering, Personal Goods, Mining and Automobiles & Parts.

At the market open in London, the FTSE 100 Index dropped 0.85%. The FTSE 250 Index and the FTSE 350 Index also fell. The FTSE 250 declined 0.64%, while the FTSE 350 dropped by 0.63%. The IT outage disrupted the stock markets as well as banking, international flights and other network-dependent businesses this morning.

Top Gainers:

• Rolls-Royce (LON:RR) Holdings: Climbed 0.71% or 3.10 points to 437.70
• Auto Trader Group Plc (LON:AUTOA): Increased 0.20% or 1.60 points to 803.20
• AstraZeneca (NASDAQ:AZN): Rose 0.15% or 18.0 points to 12,144.0

Top Losers:

• Spirax-Sarco Engineering (LON:SPX): Dropped 5.80% or 520.0 points to 8,445.0
• Fresnillo (LON:FRES): Fell 4.72% or 29.50 points to 596.00
• Beazley (LON:BEZG): Declined 4.15% or 28.00 points to 646.00

In Commodities Trading:

• Gold Futures for August delivery dropped 37.30 points to 2,419.10 a troy ounce.
• Crude Oil for September delivery fell 0.71 points to 80.59 a barrel.
• September Brent Oil Contract dropped 0.67% or 0.57 points to 84.54 a barrel.

Currency Markets:

• GBP/USD is down from 1.30 at 1.2931.
• EUR/GBP is stable at 0.84.
• The US Dollar Index Futures was up 0.09% at 103.982

Main Economic Events:

Today's main economic events in the United Kingdom are retail sales data, which were far from reaching the expectations.

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